The Boulevard Series Part 3 - When Your Art Finds You

It is a great thing when your art finds you.

We each have an art of our own.  We don’t always know what it is yet.  It is something we seek and usually feel less than complete without.  We also call them our gifts.  It is something given to us in order to be given to others in one form or another.

There are different kinds of artists as well.

Some “artists” have to tell you that they are in fact “artists”.  They do everything they can to “offend your sensibilities” in order to “make a statement”.  I must say that if someone has to tell you they are an artist I think it’s probably safe to say they really aren’t one at all.

Some artists have found something that truly gives them joy and satisfaction in the finished product.  Whether it has any lasting effect on anyone else is secondary to them and, in most cases, mostly irrelevant to them.  It is what they like.

Still other artists have developed to the point where their art has reached a pinnacle where the rest of us can understand and appreciate the message expressed in their work.  Some of us even discover that we actually like it.

Then there is the artist who, instead of finding his or her art, is instead captured by the art that seeks expression through them.  The medium in which they exercise this gift is irrelevant.  The effect of the end result of the process is the important part.  I am not sure what to call these individuals; any title I gave would be superfluous anyway.

I was privileged to spend a few hours yesterday with a friend who falls into the last category.

His name is Cliff Miller.  He owns Boulevard Coffee.  Now I know I have mentioned Cliff before, and he has become a very good friend to me.  Cliff makes coffee.  Now to those of you who don’t drink coffee this will seem silly to you.  But to those of us who do drink the stuff, and in many instances live by it, this is a Great Thing. 

You see, the thing is, Boulevard Coffee is more than just a coffee house.  It’s not just a business, it’s a gathering place.  If, once you’ve darkened the doorway, you choose to drink a cup of coffee you will find that it is indeed an experience unique to this place, because Cliff is an “artist” whose art found him.

Most coffee places buy their coffee from a supplier and brew it in the shop.  This is fine, but it can take some time to find a roaster who adequately reflects the atmosphere the proprietor wishes to reflect.

Cliff roasts his own coffee, and it is unique to him, and because of Cliff’s devotion to his art you will experience some of the best coffee you have ever tasted.

In the course of our last weekly conversation, he invited me to come by his roasting plant to show me how it’s done.  I took him up on that invitation yesterday, and he did indeed show me. 

I watched as he selected the blend of green beans he wanted for the first batch he would do that day.  He never formally measured anything: he just knew what was supposed to be in it.  He weighed it out and it was exactly what he wanted it to be.  He then took the beans over to the roaster and put them in.  He showed me how the temperature is set in the roaster and how just a few degrees difference in temperature can be the difference in what kind of roast you get.  I looked through the window built into the side of the roasting chamber and watched as the beans changed color.  As we waited for them to finish I watched Cliff.  He looked around the shop to make sure everything was operating as it should.

“I have this equipment all set up in the center of the shop because it’s the center of everything that happens here.  I can step back from this spot and see everything else that’s going on here, and I’ve got God looking over my shoulder there so everything’s good.” He yelled over the roar of the machine as he pointed over his shoulder at a picture of Jesus teaching a crowd on a hillside tacked to the wall.

As the beans finished roasting he transferred them to a cooling bin where a large fan sucks air down through the beans as they are stirred and quickly cooled.  They were a rich, dark brown color now.

The smell of coffee, even to the uninitiated, is almost universally liked.  It’s even better when you first open the bag to put it in the coffee maker.  But even that will not prepare you for the aroma that these beans hold immediately after they are roasted.  It’s truly amazing. 

As I watched the beans being stirred in the bin I realized that this was a new experience for me and that it was something that I would not see often enough to get tired of.  On the other hand, if I had to see it every day and my living was dependent on this I might get to the point where I wouldn’t want to see another coffee bean again.  Then I thought about Cliff, and I looked over at him and realized that this was truly what he wanted to do.  This was not a job to him.  This was joy for him even though it was his chosen profession as well.

“Even after you retire you won’t be able to quit doing this will you?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head, “No.  That’s why I have that little roaster over there.  I’ll just go out to the shop I’ll set up at home and roast what I want to for a few hours and then I’ll just do whatever else I need to do that day.  I like it too much to stop.”

I asked him one day how he got started in the coffee business, and he told me his job history that took him across the country from New York to Seattle, and eventually to Carmichael, California. 

“Then”, he said “one fateful day I ran out of coffee.  I went out to get more and found that there was no coffee in Carmichael.”  (I take that to mean there was no real coffee in Carmichael) “So I went home to my wife and I said, ‘There’s no coffee in Carmichael.  I think we should open our own coffee place.’ ”

I suspect the ensuing discussion was somewhat spirited since at the time his lovely wife Karen was caring for a new baby, and there were many factors involved in an undertaking like this, but the rest is, as they say, history.

Over the years it has all evolved into what it is, and it has done so because Cliff is who he is.  When Cliff’s art found him it sought expression through him by way of coffee, but it has not been confined to just that medium.  It has found expression in the shops that he has owned, in the employees that choose to work for him (which list contains the names of some artists of no small talent in their own right as well like Jeff and Kristen), and in the people that come to his shop, and in the band that he plays in.  It is in the look on a customer’s face when they light up with the realization that, “So this is how it’s supposed to taste!”  It is the quality of something not just done right, but done The Way It Is Meant To Be Done.

Some artists work with wood, some with words, some with music, some with paint and canvass, or stone, or clay, or even coffee.  But no matter the medium, The Grand Artist has chosen to express His art through broken and flawed vessels.  Regardless of how useless we may feel at times, His eyes see us as precious and useful.  Those things in me which I often see as flaws are often meant to be things that cause His gift in me to flow more freely.  For the place in this vessel from which my art, or gift, is poured out causes it to flow to a particular spot exactly where He needs it to be, and so I become an extension of Him, if I choose to let Him use me.  It is when His Art finds expression through me that I finally realize my purpose in this life, and it is in those moments that I find my greatest happiness.

©Dan Bode 2004